The Scotch Tories died hard. Worsted in fair fight they resorted to foul; and among the publications avowedly established for personal slander of their adversaries, a preeminence so infamous was obtained by the Beacon, that it disgraced the cause irretrievably. Against this malignant libeller Jeffrey rose in the Court of Session again and again, and the result of its last prosecution showed the power of the party represented by it thoroughly broken. The successful advocate, at length triumphant even in that Court over the memory of his talents and virtues elsewhere, had now forced himself into the front rank of his profession; and they who listened to his advocacy found it even more marvellous than his criticism, for power, versatility, and variety. Such rapidity yet precision of thought, such volubility yet clearness of utterance, left all competitors behind. Hardly any subject could be so indifferent or uninviting, that this teeming and fertile intellect did not surround it with a thousand graces of allusion, illustration, and fanciful expression. He might have suggested Butler’s hero, ‘—who could not ope His mouth but out there flew a trope,’ with the difference that each trope flew to its proper mark, each fancy found its place in the dazzling profusion, and he could at all times, with a charming and instinctive ease, put the nicest restraints and checks on his glowing velocity of declamation. A worthy Glasgow baillie, smarting under an adverse verdict obtained by these facilities of speech, could find nothing so bitter to advance against the speaker as a calculation made with the help of Johnson’s Dictionary, to the effect that Mr. Jeffrey, in the course of a few hours, had spoken the whole English language twice over!